Preventing Obesity

By E Douglas Kihn, OMD, LAc, CPT

Obesity is defined as having a Body Mass Index number of 30 or higher. Body Mass Index is a method of measuring a person’s fat to lean ratio using a mathematical formula that considers one’s height and weight. A BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight, while a BMI of 18 to 24.9 is considered normal. BMI is not the most accurate way to measure the fat to lean ratio, but it is the most convenient.

In our modern world, obesity is a dangerous condition. This eating disorder has been conclusively linked to the most deadly diseases – heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes 2, hypertension, and arthritis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the United States one-third of the population is obese, up from 13 percent in 1960. From 1980 to 2000 obesity among American adults doubled, and the number of obese children and teenagers nearly tripled. Obesity has indeed reached epidemic proportions. If you are overweight, your best chance of preventing obesity lies in body fat reduction. But before we get to that, we need to understand obesity in greater detail.

The biological purpose of obesity and excess weight

For 100,000 years or more, obesity was a seasonal stratagem useful for surviving long cold winters and famines. In the late summer and fall, our Stone Age ancestors who knew they would be facing a difficult winter would eat as much as possible and get as fat as possible. Stored fat is essentially highly-concentrated energy, very necessary for sustaining life during those dark cold months when there was very little if any food to be foraged or hunted. Body fat is also a terrific insulator against the cold, as any obese person will tell you. In addition, large amounts of body fat are always accompanied by an equal proportion of stored fecal matter in the colon. This fecal matter contains ample amounts of vitamin K, which is useful for stopping bleeding. Losing blood is dangerous in wintertime. The sudden loss of blood heat can be fatal.

There was another very important purpose to carrying enlarged fat cells in the winter, one that is critical for our understanding of how to prevent obesity. Enlarged fat cells have a calming effect on the mind and body. First, just carrying an extra fifty or a hundred pounds of body weight will depress the thyroid, slow down metabolism, create fatigue, and make you want to sleep a lot. This is a good thing when your task is to hibernate through the winter, but not a good thing today when you have to work for a living and lead a busy life like everyone else.

Stored fat also calms the mind. Enlarged fat cells secrete hefty amounts of estriol, a form of estrogen. Estrogen has been demonstrated to increase the concentration of mood-calming neurotransmitters such as serotonin (of Prozac fame), dopamine, and norepinephrine. It affects their release, reuptake, and enzymatic inactivation. It also increases the number of receptors for these neurotransmitters. Estrogen also works to increase blood flow to the brain as well as decreases inflammation that is thought to contribute to hyperactive brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s During hibernation, excessive activity such as thinking and feeling will drain energy sources of the individual and the group. Imagine being shut up in a cave for six months with 20 relatives. You would not want to be too lively. Instead you and your group would stand a better chance of survival if your thoughts, senses, and emotions were dulled and sluggish.

This last fact illustrates the critical importance of improving mental health while reducing body fat. Good mental health revolves around the ability to establish and maintain mental calmness – peace of mind – regardless of external, stressful factors, and without the use of any substances, including fat cells, hormone-replacement therapy, food, drugs, or supplements.

Increasing mental calmness

Many roads lead to Rome. Here are some tried and true suggestions for improving mental health while reducing body fat. But it is important to realize that changing your external circumstances – finding the right job, the right companion, the right dwelling – is not part of the solution.
• Self-trust. Trust your emotions and your physical feelings to lead you to what you need. Self-trust is the basis for self-esteem, which is the basis for self-confidence, which is the basis for the kind of mental calmness that all animals share. Advice from the so-called experts will jerk you this way and that, keeping you off-balance, but the advice from your own self will never betray you.
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy. A talk therapist does not have all the answers. Their job is simply to help you find the answers that already exist inside you.
• Calming exercises. Slow physical movements accompanied by deep rhythmic breathing calm the mind. Find a convenient class in yoga, taiqi, qigong, or something similar and put together your own routine that you can practice daily.
• Philosophy/religion. Understanding the big picture is a critical element in calming the mind. Personally, I recommend studying the philosophies of Taoism or Zen Buddhism, coming from an Oriental tradition as I do.
• Intense physical exercise. Numerous studies clearly indicate that those who engage in daily strenuous exercise have increased mental calmness as well as enhanced cognitive abilities.

Preventing obesity for most Americans – one-third of whom are officially classified as “overweight” - means understanding how to not increase body fat and how to decrease body fat. There exist many myths surrounding fat gain and fat loss. Let us briefly examine them before we move on to what really works.

The main misbeliefs about gaining body fat

1. Some foods will make you fat. There are no foods known to science that will cause fat cells to increase in volume. The term “fattening foods” was invented in the United States for the purposes of selling certain foods and marketing nutritionist books.
2. Foods that contain high percentages of carbohydrates or fats will make you fat. Neither the fat nor the carbohydrate content of any food will enlarge your fat cells. This is scientifically impossible. This belief originates in the fact that fatty and sweet (carbohydrate) tasting foods are easier to overeat, thus leading to weight gain.

The six worst ways of losing body fat.

1. Spot reducing. The muscle does not own the fat above it. There is no functional connection between the two. Body fat is simply energy storage for the entire system. It is distributed evenly up to a point so that you can carry reserve energy and still move well. You cannot perform a thousand sit-ups and expect to lose belly fat. You cannot perform a hundred triceps extensions on the pulley machine and expect to lose fat at the back of the arms. The burning you feel from these exercises is not fat being metabolized, but rather excess lactic acid and other debris from muscular contractions not being evacuated fast enough into the lymph system.
2. Aerobic exercising. It can take an hour to burn 700 calories of fat while exercising on a treadmill or other aerobic device, and 10 minutes afterward to eat 1,000 calories of ice cream as a “reward.” A 2010 study confirmed that aerobic exercise is rarely useful for losing fat for this very reason, but is useful for keeping the fat off.
3. Taking supplements. There are many supplements on the market that will decrease body fat by increasing metabolism. Most have unpleasant side effects and none represent the complete solution.
4. Eating the “right” foods. There are no foods known to science that decrease the size of fat cells. There are no known vitamins or minerals or food components that are proven to help you lose body fat. Information to the contrary is simply advertising hype.
5. Eating many small meals every day. The stated reasons for this very popular advice are that the constant processing of food in the digestive system raises metabolism, thus burning lots of calories, and that preventing hunger will prevent overeating. While raising metabolism will burn stored calories, there are other non-caloric ways of raising metabolism, such as movement/exercise, drinking hot drinks, and the consumption of black, green, or white tea.* Preventing hunger is unnatural and means that the intestines are constantly full of food and never get a chance to get clean. This will lead to physical problems down the road. The constant eating of food is unknowingly used to calm the anxious mind, instead of using the healthy and natural calming methods detailed above. The last reason that this method is a bad idea is that the endless preoccupation with food contributes to the eating neuroses so prevalent in American life, filling us with feelings of guilt and deprivation and distracting us from listening to our true eating experts, out own bodies.
6. Calorie counting. This method rightly proceeds from the scientific fact that consuming less calories (a measure of food energy) than used will decrease the size of fat cells. However, it substitutes thinking for feeling, thus undercutting self-reliance and self-esteem. Too often this method ignores the improvement of mental health, thus leading to a rapid regaining of body fat in 90% of cases. Modern corporate weight-loss systems such as Nutri-System, Weight Watchers, and Jenny Craig are based on calorie counting, and are increasingly recognizing the need for psychological counseling as a means for achieving and especially maintaining leanness.

The best method for preventing obesity

The best method for preventing unwanted weight gain combines calorie restriction plus resistance training plus instinct awareness.

There’s water weight, and there’s weight from unwanted matter - enlarged fat cells, blood cholesterol, and old (more than one day) fecal matter. Water weight comes and goes like the wind. There are all kinds of reasons for weight loss and weight gain due to water. Water weight can fluctuate day by day by five pounds or more. However, there is only one way to get rid of unwanted matter/energy, and that is to consume less than you use. The energy consumed by us and stored in our bodies is measured in calories. All systems that successfully reduce body fat are based on restricting calories. If you burn 2,000 calories in one 24-hour period and you eat and drink 1,999 calories in the same time period, you will lose weight that is not just water weight. What you eat and drink does not matter at all.

Calorie restriction must be combined with resistance training. If a person uses 2,000 calories per day and eats and drinks 1,500 calories per day, the body will look around for 500 calories that are not being used. In a deep hibernating winter when our ancestors moved as little as possible, their bodies would change mostly muscle, bone, and organ tissue into ready energy, figuring that lean tissue is not needed for sleeping and energy conservation, but fat is needed for warmth and sedation. This does not serve our purposes, however.

In the spring, as our ancestors began lifting more things and walking more, their bodies started building more bone, muscle, and organ strength while shedding winter weight, i.e. fat, cholesterol, and fecal matter. When you lift weights – heavy weights – your percentage of body fat loss goes way up while lean tissue loss is minimized, even coincident with calorie restriction, as long as small quantities of protein foods and micronutrients are consumed.

The last part of this successful formula is instinct awareness and self-trust. Just like all other animals on earth, the human body knows exactly when to eat, how much to eat, and what to eat. This eating expert is always with us, and is always right. The problem is that the blind worship of technology and “experts,” promoted through massive and relentless commercial advertising, has caused a situation in which this infallible instinctive advice is completely ignored, drowned out, and shouted down!

There are no monkeys that are too fat to climb fruit trees. There are no lions that are too fat to catch zebras. And there are no sparrows that are too fat to fly. There are also no epidemics of dehydration among any of these species, in spite of the fact that there are no “experts” around to tell them how much water to drink. Imagine that!

Those who are most successful at maintaining a lean body, cultivating peace of mind, and eating anything they fancy eating, are those who have dumped overboard most of the “scientific” judgments and opinions about food and eating, and who mainly trust their own bodies on the subject.

For some helpful suggestions on sharpening your eating instincts, go to Hunger Awareness Training. For an in-depth look at getting lean, go to Longevity Principle #2 – Get Lean.

*White tea is the main ingredient in Bo Jen Mi Tea.